The truck’s original color was time-washed to a monochrome gray. When Deacon hit the highway headed east the speedometer needle maxed out at a quivering seventy-five. The engine roared as though it was ready to leap out from under the hood and eat them both whole.
Outside of town they raced over a hilltop and spotted a sheriff’s car flying up from the opposite direction. Marcus felt pure relief over being saved from careening death, until Deacon began honking his horn and blinking his lights. The sheriff’s car whoomed by them, made a controlled skidding turn, and raced up to where Deacon was shouldering the truck onto the verge.
The old preacher only started wheezing as he tottered toward Amos Culpepper. The sheriff called, “You gonna make it, Deacon?”
“Thought for a minute there I was sixteen again.” The pastor huffed his way onto the rear fender and fanned himself with his shirt-tail. “Hateful thing to see a body age.”
“Hop on in.” Amos pointed Marcus into the passenger seat. When they were seated he cut on the siren, whoomed over to the passing lane, and cast Marcus an adrenaline grin. “Didn’t wake up this morning expecting a high-velocity touch-and-go, did you?”
“What’s going on?”
Amos shouted over the alarm and roaring engine, “This is strictly a good old boy kinda deal, you understand what I’m saying?”
“I shouldn’t mention this to anybody,” Marcus interpreted.
“Not unless you want me to lose my job.” He shot a quick thumb back to where Deacon was gradually recovering. “That gentleman there must’ve heard about it from goodness only knows where. He told you. Then you called me and officially requested my help, which is why I’m involved at all.”
“Right.”
Amos shot by a truck going seventy as though the rig was hauled over and parked. “Good buddy of mine down on the Wilmington force called me with a strictly unofficial heads-up. Seems an NYPD boyo called him from the airport, asking could he supply Dale Steadman’s home address. Your client must like his privacy, since he registered his home under a corporate name.”
Having a professional behind the wheel was offset by the fact that their speed now topped a hundred and fifteen miles an hour. Marcus winced as they almost played bumper cars with an SUV whose rear window was completely blocked with children’s toys. “A New York policeman?”
“Manhattan detective. An Italian-sounding name, you know the kind, enough vowels for a whole family.” Amos released his double grip on the wheel long enough to fish in his pocket. “Hang on, I wrote the name down here.”
Marcus read, “Lieutenant Aureolietti.”
“My buddy knew about Dale Steadman running the company up here and all the legal goings-on. Told me the detective’s got himself an arrest warrant.”
“What’s the charge?”
Amos granted him a lightning glance. “Murder one.”
Near the Greenville airport’s turnoff, Amos used the radio for a series of barked messages. As the engine was still bellowing and the tires screeching and siren screaming and the world was whipping by at something near ninety, Amos might as well have spoken in Martian. Which was why, when they pulled through the airport’s emergency-access entrance and wheeled over to where a helicopter was already spinning up, Marcus was caught completely by surprise.
Amos cut off the engine and siren. “I sure hope you got a whole pile of the ready with you. Either that or a heat-resistant credit card.”
Marcus was glad to find he had the strength to stand unaided. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“Always a pleasure to do the local community a service.” Amos offered his hand. “Go out there and save the world, Marcus. It’s what you’re good at.”
As they approached the revving chopper, Deacon grinned so broadly he revealed the gold embedded in his back teeth. “Always did want to have me a ride in one of them things!”
Amos hustled them over to the rear door, helped Deacon climb inside, then gave the pilot a thumbs-up.
Deacon’s eyes grew steadily rounder as the blades began thundering overhead. When the pilot reared back on the stick, Marcus felt as though he had left his stomach back on the landing pad.
Deacon whooped as the ground shot away. “Great jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” He plastered his face to the side window. “Now this here is flying!”
Once he was fairly certain the pilot was not going to plow a furrow down someone’s tobacco field, Marcus forced his brain into gear. Only one idea came to mind, and that one held no satisfaction whatsoever. But try as he might, he could come up with nothing better. With the miles sweeping by in great swatches of cloud and pine and summer-green fields, Marcus touched the pilot’s shoulder and motioned that he needed to say something.
The pilot pulled a plasticine map with a red circle drawn over a point along the coastline off the copilot’s seat and gestured Marcus to come forward. The pilot handed him a headset with built-in mike and plugged it into the console. When Marcus had fitted on the padded earpieces, the pilot asked, “What’s up?”
“I need to make a call and my cell phone is back at the house.”
“Number?”
“No idea. Can you connect me to information?”
The pilot switched over the radio controls and said, “HR 438 to Wilmington airfield.”
“Tower here. Go, HR 438.”
“Emergency request for phone patch.”
“Number?”
“Request help with number. Can search?”
“Affirmative. Name?”
Marcus was ready. “Judge Garland Perry, in Wilmington.”
“Office or residence?”
“Private residence. On Fourth Street.”
“Hold one.”
The pilot used the interim to point ahead. Through the sun-drenched bubble Marcus made out the first glint of sea-blue. Not long now.
There were a series of clicks, then, “Call ready. Go ahead, HR 438. Tower out.”
The judge’s irate voice shouted, “What in blazes is going on here?”
“Judge Perry, this is Marcus Glenwood.”
“Who?”
“Marcus Glenwood, your honor. I met you on your doorstep last weekend in regard to the Dale Steadman case.”
The judge’s ire heightened. “Is it your habit, sir, to disturb officers of the court during the little free time they have?”
“No sir. But this-”
“I was on the phone to my daughter. In Geneva. All of a sudden I’ve got sixteen dozen different operators climbing into our private conversation! And because you, sir, have the gall to declare another national emergency!”
“Not national, sir. But an emergency just the same.”
“What in tarnation is all that racket?”
“I’m inside a helicopter, sir.”
“What?”
Marcus swiveled in his seat so he didn’t have to observe the pilot’s grin. “Your honor, I’ve just learned that a New York detective has appeared at the Wilmington airport with the intent of arresting a local citizen.”
There was a longish pause as the judge switched into official gear. “You mean he’s set to arraign him for an extradition hearing.”
Legal jurisprudence required an arrest warrant from another state be served to a local judge. The judge would then issue a second warrant for extradition, assuming the evidence was sound. But big-city cops were notorious for considering the court system a foe. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you. But my guess is he plans to slap the cuffs on our gentleman and take him back.”
“Without a hearing?”
“Sometimes they do that, judge. They march in, pick the guy up, then claim later that our man consented to the move.” Our man. Making it a local issue. “Then it’s my client’s word against the detective’s.”
“Now why would he wish to rile the local court with such an outrageous act?”
“Holding an extradition hearing means I get to see his evidence, as your honor well knows. He may not want to reveal all his cards at this point.”